Knights of Academia discussion

In chapter 5, Anselm says in response to Boso asking what if a non divine person, like a sinless man God created for himself, had died for the sins of humanity instead of God himself dying as Christ, "Don't you realise man would rightly be deemed to be
the servant of whatever other person would redeem him from eternal death?" He then goes on to say this would make humankind required to be the servant of one other than God, which is unacceptable on the basis of Luke 20:36 (KJV - 34 And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage:
35 But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:
Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.)
But, on what basis would mankind be the servant of this sinless non-divine man if God had created such a man to die for humanity?
When looking at Christ, redemption through accepting the gift of christ requires that obedience to God, and thus obedience to Christ through obedience to God, but if the gift of salvation was delivered through a non divine person through god (e.g by God making a sinless man), that doesn't seem like it would mean obedience would have to be towards the non divine person, who would essentially through death be a substitute for Christ (who was himself a substitute for mankind through death).
Essentially, I think Christ must merit obedience as part of salvation because God must have obedience as part of salvation, and Christ is a divine person and thus a person of God. But it seems the ultimate givers of salvation are the father and the spirit, and Christ is a vessel (but due to being a divine person qualifies as God himself and so merits what God merits). If that's the case then a non divine person could take the place of Christ by dying for mankind, and obedience would still only have to be towards God, but as Christ wouldn't exist, obedience would only have to be towards the father and the spirit, as those two would be the only extant divine persons.
So the question that has to be answered for Anselm's answer is, does he who dies for the sins of mankind deserve obedience in himself? Does Christ have or does he ever say he has a legitimate demand for obedience and that humans should serve him, *specifically* only because of his substitutionary death (not because he is a divine person)?
Since Christ is both a divine person and performed the substitutionary death, it's very difficult to deduce what an individual who was not divine but did die for humanity what would deserve, vis-a-vis obedience.

Well, my initial reaction is: First I have to understand Anselm's argument before I can evaluate it. Or at least I have to try hard to understand it.

In this case I think I need to understand two things:

1. "Don't you realize that man would rightly be deemed to be the servant of whatever other person would redeem him from eternal death?" In the form of the argument, Anselm presents this as a given. He does not explain or defend it. The rest of the paragraph works through the consequences of this starting point.

So my first question is why is this self-evident to Anselm? How can I think like he does so I can see the self-evidentness of it?

2. What does it mean to Anselm for humankind to be the servant of some person? Now, I don't see obedience at all in Anselm's paragraph. Therefore for right now I conclude that to talk about obedience is to bring in extraneous ideas from outside.

What I do see is a hierarchy, which Anselm says this other way of doing things would mess up. The hierarchy is supposed to be God at the top, with humankind immediately below Him, at the same hierarchy level as the angels. Anselm specifically says this other way of doing things would not restore humankind to the dignity it had originally. The hierarchy would be God then this other created person and then humankind.

And I note that Anselm is not talking about individual human beings being the servant of X or Y, but of the whole of humankind.

So "to be servant" seems to mean "to be attached to and below in the cosmic hierarchy."

His original assertion now seems to be that in the great cosmic hierarchy, humanity would be attached to and below whoever "redeems" humanity from "eternal death," and that consequences of this would be to mess up the cosmic hierarchy by attaching humanity to the wrong node.

So now I would return to my question about his starting point and ask what is it about redemption from eternal death that attaches humankind to the redeeming one in the cosmic hierarchy?

[Again, my immediately previous message is doing what How to Read a Book says to do in Chapter 8, "Coming to Terms with the Author." Anselm seems to use "servant" in a particular way. So I try to ascertain what that way is. One way to proceed is to replace the problematic word (in this case "servant") with a meaningless word (perhaps "foo") and try to infer from the text alone what this "foo" thing is.]

It seems to me that for Anselm redemption of humankind is a relational thing in addition to being an operational thing. That is, from this paragraph I conclude that Anselm says or would say that when X redeems Y that a relationship is formed between them as a necessary part or result of the redemption. So redemption is not like me washing my car, in which I operate externally on the car. It somehow creates a permanent (ontological?) relationship between the redeemer and the redeemed. In this paragraph the term he uses is that the redeemed "becomes the servant of" the redeemer. And this relationship, because it is between God or some entity and humanity defines humanity's place in the cosmic order.

Now, why he used "servant," and why for him redemption is relational in addition to being operational, I will wait and see. Here he presents it as a given, not needing to be explained or defended.

You're right, obedience would seem to be my own concept.
Its difficult to get what Anselm means from this argument though. Luke 20:36 mentions what life will be like after the resurrection for those who are worthy. The resurrection shows the final plan for humanity, and if it could be fulfilled with some non divine person dying in place of Christ, then man would end up like the angels without Christ. Which would mean man didn't need Christ to die, which would undermine Anselm s argument. Thus I'm feeling inclined towards making the tentative deduction that Anselm believes the resurrection could not have happened with

"And if so, then man would not at all have been restored
to the dignity which he would have had if he had not sinned. "
The dignity that comes from being like the angels only actually materialises after the resurrection, if going by Luke 20:36. So the resurrection seems key.



To build on your idea of relational redemption, the second part of Luke verse
"They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection." does speak to some sort of persistent relationship, perhaps formed/preserved by the substitutionary death. I wonder if there's any connection between servant and death. Also, the children of which person of god seems key - if the children of the father, then Christ specifically dying instead of someone else is neither here nor there when it comes to redemption, but if children of Christ (and necessarily children of Christ, maybe in addition to children of the father, in order to be considered worthy of the resurrection), then some other person dying would mean man would be children of that person, perhaps to the exclusion of being the children of the father (and thus being worthy of the resurrection).

The foo method sounds very useful, I think I'd benefit from trying to understand which argument is actually being out forth precisely before trying to grasp the specific argument's rationale.